Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Hannah McGlade bravely addresses the complex issue of Aboriginal child abuse, arguing that Aboriginal child sexual assault has been formed within the entrenched societal forces of racism, colonisation and patriarchy, yet cast in the Australian public domain as an Aboriginal ‘problem’. She believes that we should be guided by Indigenous human rights concepts and international Indigenous responses. In doing so she believes that we can help to stem the harm to our future generations. Read more about Our Greatest Challenge: Aboriginal children and human rights

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A book by Bruce Elder which has become widely used in teaching Aboriginal history at both secondary and tertiary levels. Bruce's account of the atrocities committed as white settlers pushed into the rich grazing lands is handled with a journalistic objectivity. One gruesome event at Myall Creek, Elder skillfully juxtaposes the harmonious relationships between the Aboriginal people and the farmhands, with a renegade gang determined to seek retribution on any Aboriginal people that happen to cross their path. Read more about Blood on the Wattle - Book Review

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Book Review: 'True Light and Shade' by Worimi man, Professor John Maynard, is filled with beautiful images by convict artist Joseph Lycett that powerfully capture in intimate detail Aboriginal life, a rare record of Aboriginal people within the vicinity of Newcastle and how they adapted to European settlement before cultural destruction impacted on these groups. John Maynard writes an engaging short biography of Lycett and his life in Australia and follows this with a detailed commentary on each of the 20 images in the album. Read more about True Light and Shade: An Aboriginal Perspective of Joseph Lycett's Art

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The Black resistance: an introduction to the history of the First Nations struggle against British Colonialism.

Using material that was ignored by most 'white' historians, this book traces the dispossession of the Aboriginal people and records the strategic and tactical objectives of tribal defence as well as the aims and methods of the British invaders. Read more about The Black Resistance

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The book argues the idea that the first Australians were hunter gatherers has been invented to undermine Aboriginal people.

"My message to my own people," he says, "is the rest of the country's not going to change if we don't stick up for our culture; and our culture was one where we had an agricultural economy. If we stick up for our culture, it'll be useful not just for us but for the whole of Australia, because some of those crops that our people were growing are going to be useful in the future." Read more about Hunter gatherers: Invented to undermine First Nations people